Bill Description: House Bill 526 would remove some restrictions on very small businesses that want to sell time/temperature controlled foods.
Rating: +1
Does it increase barriers to entry into the market? Examples include occupational licensure, the minimum wage, and restrictions on home businesses. Conversely, does it remove barriers to entry into the market?
Idaho law imposes a host of regulations on food sellers, especially those who sell “time/temperature control for safety” (TCS) foods. Complying with these regulations is burdensome and costly, especially for small businesses.
House Bill 526 would create Section 39-1608, Idaho Code, to establish a carve-out for very small businesses in this space. It would say, “Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, a cottage food operation making sales that do not exceed five thousand dollars ($5,000) in cumulative gross receipts in the current or previous calendar year may sell time/temperature control for safety foods directly to a consumer.”
Of note, the $5,000 annual cap on gross sales appears to apply to the entirety of the “cottage food operation,” not just to sales of TCS foods.
With such a low cap, the exception would likely only apply to very small home businesses and perhaps some infrequent participants in farmers’ markets.
As a point of comparison, House Bill 187, introduced in 2015, would have defined “home kitchen operations” as having annual gross receipts of less than $30,000 per year. And that was more than a decade ago. (Adjusted for inflation, $30,000 in 2015 would be more than $41,500 today.)
Reducing regulations and barriers to entry is positive, but low caps like the one contained in this bill can have the unintended consequence of discouraging a small business from growing. It is unlikely that the profits from $5,000 in gross sales would even be sufficient to pay for the compliance measures required once the business exceeded the threshold contained in this law.
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